I photographed this laid-low 1958 Continental a few months ago, but had forgotten about the pictures until recently. It was spotted with a group of other cars in a warehouse parking lot in an industrial area. I had seen them from the interstate several times, and made note of the cars, meaning to get back to them. Finally, when I was in the area again and with a camera handy, I ventured into the deserted industrial park on a quiet Sunday afternoon, on the scope for this Continental. I knew it was a Continental even from the highway, but I couldn’t place the exact year, other than it was a Lincoln from the “Leviathan” 1958-1960 era.

I rounded the end of one empty parking lot and there she was, a 1958 Continental Mark III hardtop sedan. These were the largest unibody cars ever made at the time, and in an attempt to one up Cadillac, Ford had launched a separate Continental Division, exclusively selling the Mark II at first.

image: plan59.com

The line up expanded for 1958, when the Continentals sort of became upscale “regular” Lincolns with Breezway windows and more equipment. I use the term in quotation marks because there really isn’t much about these Lincolns that is regular.

I would tell you I don’t find them massively attractive, but I don’t hate them. They are interesting in an “out there” sort of way which you might not find likeable in a car, but as architecture is pretty interesting.

1958 Lincoln (non-Continental)

If there ever was a Googie car, this vintage Continental would be it. The Continental has more cantilevers and breezeways than a Tomorrowland dream house. Denting the pavement with 5000lbs and casting a shadow 229 inches long, these Marks were massive cars.

The 1958-1960 Lincolns represent a “jumping of the shark” for Lincoln from which they almost never recovered. The mildly good looking previous standard Lincoln models and the very elegant Mark II’s were pretty nice, but not making the impact on the market that Lincoln wanted, so they turned it up to 11.

Lincoln spiked the punchbowl at the Christmas party in a hopes of good times, but what they really ended up with the was equivalent of a fat Carl from sales wearing a lampshade on his head and puking in the plastic plant.

The sobering up was never more evident than in the clean, “we’ll have none of that screwing around,” McNamara-approved 1961 Lincoln Continental.

For now, let’s reflect on this space age leviathan from the last years of the “I like Ike era.” While the Mark convertibles from this era are actually considered milestone cars, the more common sedan (5891 produced) is not as desired and ignored, as much as you can ignore a 229 inch long car that can be seen from space.

There are reverse angles and cantilevers all over this car, similar to lots of the late ’50s mid century modern architecture that is thankfully starting to garner appreciation. The interior is also interesting, with a glass covered pod that looks like it’s semi-floating against a finned grilled panel.

With an interior so big you can use it as storage!

We got fins going up and down: beat that, Cadillac! Interestingly though, even though we were nearing fin zenith, the Connies’ aren’t all that big. This big Connie is sizable enough to be visible from space, she used to be visible from Google earth, which is how I found her location the first time, but since then she has disappeared from her berth. I wonder where she went off to and hope that she is being lovingly restored somewhere, but I fear that’s not the case. Wherever you’ve gone Continental, I wish you Godspeed.

Lincoln was lucky to be back to #2 for 1958 however after being kicked out for one year only by Imperial the previous year. The 1957 quality problems at Chrysler and the “Eisenhower recession” was a double whammy for Imperial. Then the 1958 Imperial, except for the quad headlights, looked too much like the 1957 didn’t helped things either.

The picture with the “modern house” above was probably taken by Boulevard, who photographed many of the ads and brochures for the Big Three for decades. I have a book about their methods and famous pictures; it looks like they s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d the car out in that picture, as if it needed stretching.

It’s amazing how much more attractive a ’61 model is than a ’60, but the ’60 still has its appeal. I was tempted by a ’60 Premiere back in my college days; it was cheap, but had been sitting forever, and I had nowhere near that kind of money.

I’m a big American car fan but this is ugly beyond belief.I dislike it from it’s pre dented fenders to it’s massive overhanging ass.58 wasn’t a great year for Detroit styling but this is a shocker after the beautiful MkII.The Edsel of which I’m a big fan is far better looking(and was cheaper).Fins and chrome were about as over the top as it was possible to go,cars were getting bigger with even bigger thirstier engines to lug them around,the new compact cars on the horizon must have seemed a breath of fresh air

Keep in mind that GM brought out the stainless steel roof, suicide door Cadillac Eldorado, a typical overdone example of 50’s GM exhibitionism to compete against the Mark II . . . . . . . and it sold just as well. Despite being relatively cobbled together quickly in comparison to the Mark. That probably got the folks at Ford saying “to hell with being subtle, we have to out-GM them”.

IIRC, the Eldo Brougham was also significantly more expensive. I believe I recall that the Mark II was a $10K car while the EB was priced at $14K. Both were obscenely expensive for their time, of course. I suppose in that price range, the gap may not really matter.

I read that GM and Ford were both losing money on these cars.Elvis & Frank Sinatra were the few people wealthy enough to buy them.The Cadillac was more expensive than a Rolls Royce,crazy money when around $2k would get you a basic Ford or Chevy

CARMINE

Posted February 28, 2014 at 10:21 AM

The Cadillac Eldorado Brougham was so expensive you could have bought 2 of the already expensive ($7000)Eldorado Seville and Biarritz for the price of one Brougham.

Glen.h

Posted February 28, 2014 at 9:16 PM

The Mk11 and Eldo Brougham were “Halo Cars” , a way of showing the overall health and design ability of their companies, and to act as mobile advertisements for them. Essentially they were properly developed show cars that the public could buy.
I don’t think they were ever meant to make a cent, but would hopefully draw customers to more realistic and profitable models further down the track.
Toyota did the same with Lexus- the first series of LS 400s made no money, but established Lexus as a real player in the market. The profits came later with the ES and GS series.

John Najjar is generally credited with primary responsibility for the ’58-’60 Lincolns. He was the head of Ford’s Advanced Styling Studio.

John Najjar also co-designed jointly with fellow Ford Motor Company stylist Bill Schmidt the groundbreaking Lincoln Futura, a futuristic concept car that served as a base for the Batmobile for the 1966 TV series Batman, as well as for the first movie adaptation of the Batman comics.

Yes, the 1958 Lincolns were basically a joint brainchild between John Najjar (head of the LINCOLN studio, and Elwood Engel, head of the ADVANCED Studio.) Gene Bordinat had not a thing to do with this car. George Walker, VP of Styling had overwhelmingly approved this design, as Lincoln was desperately searching for a new identity, one with longevity and legs, as Cadillac had done years before. The design could honestly be traced back to a concept car created by phenom Alex Tremulis (also at Ford Advanced Design) called “LaTosca”. It’s “X laid over an oval” theme fascinated many. Also the “Lincoln Diplomat” concept car of 1955 was a teaser of what was to come. Ford was fascinated by novel roof design… The breezeway backlite and reverse angle backlite was something Ford dabbled in right up to the 1966 model year. The sad thing about the 58 Lincoln is that it was a well engineered car on paper, but in actuality, not enough R & D had been executed. There were at least 6 huge recalls on the 58 models alone by mid year. It is noted as well that this was the largest automobile ever attempted to ride on “Uniframe” design… A brand new design, clean sheet of paper, a brand new way of engineering, and a brand spanking new assembly plant, all in one short timeframe… No wonder it was so tragic…. By the 1960 model year, most of the engineering bumps had been smoothed out. The 1960 was an excellent car really. But due to the public’s cool reception of the design, Najjar was demoted and transferred to the Tractor Studio for a few yrs, and Don DeLaRossa was called in to redesign and tame down the styling for 1959 and 1960, until Elwood came up with the 61 design, which actually started out as a random nondescript proposal for the 61 Thunderbird, downstairs in the corner of the Advanced Studio…. but that is another story for another day.

Whenever I see these, I can only imagine the reaction in Lincoln showrooms in late 1960, when ’61s appeared.

In hindsight, the Elwood Engel-designed Continental is a ’60s icon — not to mention a refreshing shift from the excesses of the late ’50s — but I’m sure a number of potential buyers considered them “plain” and “small.”

Or perhaps Billy Joel?
“Either I’m wrong or I’m perfectly right every time
Sometimes I lie awake, night after night
Coming apart at the seams
Eager to please, ready to fight
Why do I go to extremes?”

Ford seems to have had some pretty schizophrenic styling shifts. Few cars of any era were as beautiful, stylish and timeless as the original 1940 Lincoln Continental, yet Ford took the same basic shape and mounted that massive ugly grill for the postwar version.
Again, it seemed they recaptured their mojo with the Continental Mk II, still to me a striking balance of style and understatement, and then they just seemed to say “The hell with it, will just make it so big and cliche that it can’t be ignored.”

Ford spent much time post WWII chasing GM. The way Mercury was treated, the rise and fall of Edsel, Lincoln’s swings between conservative and outlandish, all were attempts to deal with the 800lb gorilla GM.

In the post bankruptcy world the tables have turned a bit but Ford still has that basic problem of “we know what a Ford is, we know how to sell Fords but damned if we can justify Lincoln.”

Exactly. One has to remember that in that era, the entire Ford motor company was smaller than just the Chevrolet division of GM. Somewhere I have a 1950s auto magazine article that goes into detail on this.

Needs punctuation:
The phrase “…for Lincoln that they almost never recovered from the mildly good looking previous standard Lincoln models and…” I think your intended meaning is probably “…for Lincoln that they almost never recovered from. The mildly good looking previous standard Lincoln models and..”

Seeing these images, I wonder whether the 1958 Lincolns and Continentals represent the first time that a company’s most exclusive model had less chrome tacked on than the model just below. (A later example would be the Grand Prix versus the Bonneville for 1963.)

I actually don’t find this Lincoln as severely garish as some 50s designs. I think the styling of the ’58 Thunderbird is more conflicting. At least the overall look is consistent, if overdone. Unlike many cars from that era, with diverse and grotesque styling elements literally thrown on cars. The comparison to 50s architecture is definitely appropriate.

Once restored, with wheel skirts, it will be a rolling piece of pop art. Nicely representing 50s flamboyance…

I was about 5 to 6 years old when these things were new. Even at that tender age, I thought that they were very unusual looking and not in a good way. Today I still wonder, What were they thinking? Styling “turned up to 11″ sums it up nicely Carmine. Thanks

Ford just couldn’t win with Lincoln vs. Cadillac. In the early ’50’s a Lincoln was nothing more than a dressed up Mercury (which was just a dressed up Ford) and Cadillac whomped ‘em. Understandably. In ’50’s American showing off would always outrank highway competence and a racing pedigree.

For ’56 Lincoln came up with with about an attractive a “space age” car as was possible back then. And Cadillac whomped ‘em. For ’57, they took the ’56 and went even more space age radical. And for all their trouble both Cadillac and Imperial whomped ‘em. Understandably, the ’57’s were probably the most ugly of the 50’s Lincoln’s And when they did go gorgeously restrained (Mark II), Cadillac comes up with an overblown piece of kitsch and either sell right with them, or even slightly outsells them.

OK, on to ’58. Go bigger, more outlandish, but at least keep it to a unified style unlike the ’57’s. And, for the next three years, Cadillac whomps ‘em even worse. Even though, out of the six cars only the ’58 Cadillac can be called attractive.

So finally, the gloves are really off. We go for style, beauty, restraint, classic design for ’61. One of the most beautiful American cars ever made. And for all that trouble, Cadillac continues to pound Lincoln in the dirt.

“Lincoln spiked the punchbowl at the Christmas party in a hopes of good times, but what they really ended up with the was equivalent of a fat Carl from sales wearing a lampshade on his head and puking in the plastic plant.”

Yeah, fat Carl from sales sounds like the perfect market demographic for a ’58 Continental. He wouldn’t have bought it new, either, but gotten it used and spent lots of money to keep it running in the early sixties.

I always liked these for some reason, but I prefer the slightly toned-down 1959-60 versions. Is that really a copper and gray interior? I’m in love. When I was a kid, my great aunt had a pair of toy versions in her basement that I would play with when we visited. These were even less common as toy cars than they were as real ones.

When I would profess love for these in the 70s, my car-mentor Howard would wonder about my sanity. He reviled them as genuinely awful cars. These pictures also show that there are few cars that look worse without their fender skirts.

These were sort of the forgotten Lincolns for me. As I became more conscious of cars in the early ’70s, these were non-existent thanks to low sales and a quick fall from whatever favor they had.

When I finally got a good look at these, maybe in the 1990’s, I found them a bit shocking, mostly in a bad way. But, with time, I’ve come to find them rather fascinating. There are many elements that I like, but perhaps there are just a few too many elements. The stylists put in a lot of effort to find the next hit, but it didn’t happen for this car. I can’t look for it right now, but didn’t the final proposed “true” Packard have some common elements in its profile?

It you have not seen it, this web site is very interesting, and the connections by the site creator to early television are also a good read. The gentleman has convinced me that the cars of 1958 deserve a bit more love than they usually get. At the very least, the ’58 Big Three luxury cars were probably as diverse as they ever were.

Yes, I have the same problem with the 1960 Plymouth. What should have turned into a bodyside molding wraps around the front wheelwell instead.

I also don’t like the fins on the 1960 Plymouth. They either should be shorter, or should start further forward on the rear fender, or have some chrome trim or a wrap-around bumper or taillights to break them up somehow.

There are two things that really kill this design for me. I like canted headlights, so they are fine. I actually prefer these to the later ones, where the headlight bezels were integrated into the grille area instead of standing apart.

My biggest problem is the weird rounded shape on the front fender, surrounding the front wheelwell. Instead of looping around behind the wheel, the outline should have done an s-bend towards the back of the car, then become a lower-body character line that ran down the car, across the fenderskirt, and met up with the one on the rear quarter.

My other problem is the reverse-canted “Breezeway” rear window. I never did like this on any Ford, looks like an idea lifted from some weird French car, and it doesn’t work at all on this Lincoln. Even with a normal rear window like in the brochure picture, the tapering C-pillar looks too petite for this body. The more formal roofline with a different C-pillar on the 1960 Lincoln Premiere looks best.

I think that the canted headlights and the breezeway window with that triangular C pillar are what killed this car, especially for 1959-60. (The exaggerated fender scallops on the 58s aren’t so great either). Comparing this car to the 57-60 Cadillac and Imperial, its basic shape was predictive of big cars all through the 1970s. Straight and angular lines, roof with a thick C pillar, greenhouse set in from the slab sides, this car sort of set the template for what was to come. The only difference is that in the late 50s, there was still the need for all of the visual gimmickry that would disappear over the next few years. Had Lincoln tried to modernize and stick with this platform (like Imperial did with the 64), it could have made this car quite competitive with a simple de-cluttering.

I know the canted headlights are quite polarizing. You either love them or hate them, and I think I’m in the minority. What can I say? I also love the front end of 61-62 Chryslers and customs such as the Atomic Punk and Ala Kart.

Lincoln also toned-down the front bumper from 1958-60. It does look a bit “heavy” on the front of the car, with the big chevron-shaped arrows on the ends.

Indeed John Najjar was head of Lincoln styling and is (dis)credited with this design. He was later demoted but did have a hand in the ’61 Lincoln and the ’64 Mustang. Whatever you say it certainly had presence. The canted lights and side coves were the craze in the “Kustom Kar” world then. Personally i think the sides where especially clean for this era. There is an excellent Collectible Automobile back issue available on these that really gets into the styling and engineering in detail. The plan was to out Cadillac Cadillac and in that context it did in spades. I recall these are iconic in Japan and the front end has a Mothra type face I think.

Having long been a student of Bruce McCall’s Bulgemobiles since his National Lampoon days, I think they’re a little closer to the ’58 Buick Limited than to any Ford product, at least on the outside. However, the Bulgemobiles did offer something seen in the ’58 Edsel and Chrysler products but in no GM cars: “Touch-N-Go” (pushbutton) gear shifting.

Thanks for the reminder. I loved the list of features for the 30’s Bulgemobiles: Radio Hardened Emolo Steel, Swing King Sunvisors with Command Pivoting, Herculax Springing, Safety-Softy Seats. There were probably more but that is all that I can remember. I remember as well that the copy was very funny.

Of course, Ford even made a ‘Corolla sized’ version of this for the UK market, with similar success- the Consul Classic. It was their first foray into the midsize category between the Anglia/Prefect and the larger Consuls and Zephyr/Zodiac. They designed it to compete with the Vauxhall Victor F, and although the Classic was a moderately more reliable and less rust prone car, it was really just a rather expensive placeholder until the Cortina was unveiled. Given the fact the Classic followed the ’58 Lincoln, one wonders if McNamara sent the entire design team to ‘the colonies’ as punishment for their excesses.

Roy Brown(not the foul mouthed comedian Roy “Chubby “Brown) the man behind the Edsel was sent to Dagenham.The Ford Cortina was a hit,his Zodiac/Zephyr Mk4 not so much though I like them and had a Mk4 Zephyr 6.I don’t know who else was promoted/banished to Europe.

Count me in with liking the canted headlights. As mentioned they are reminiscent of the 61-62 full size Chrysler’s, which is a compliment in my book.I thought that it had a rather boring looking dash, given the out there styling of the exterior.

I still can’t look at one of these Continentals with out thinking of the movie
“The Parent Trap”

This is a great find. I remember reading that computers weren’t used for unit-body design in those days. To ensure that the cars were strong enough, Ford took prototypes for torture tests on rough roads, and when something broke, they simply added more metal. As a result, this car (and the Thunderbird) were extremely heavy. There were no real weight savings as a result of the switch to unit-body construction.

This generation of Lincoln was a catastrophic flop – bigger, in some ways, than the Edsel. Lincoln’s market share declined throughout this car’s life span. It was so bad that Robert McNamara was prepared to make the case for killing the entire Lincoln Division. But then he saw a very sharp and elegant Elwood Engel proposal for the 1961 Thunderbird, and decided that a four-door version would make a good Lincoln.

The sobering up was never more evident than in the clean, “we’ll have none of that screwing around,” McNamara-approved 1961 Lincoln Continental.

When Tom McCahill tested the 63, he described it as “no jazz, no gook, no outer space effects, just real money and plenty of it”

As much as we ridicule the excesses of the late 50s, are modern SUVs any less garish? In my neighborhood, seems about half of the cars on the road are SUVs. At the grocery store last Monday, I would have bet 80% of the cars in the lot were SUVs.

Maybe the SUV analogy explains why I now think that are repulsive after thinking they were beautiful at the time. I recollect that the 70s Soviet Zil had styling that was obviously copied from this series of Continental. Unfortunately, I do not have a picture.

I’d say SUVs are more the “Broughams” of today. Not only Broughams, but the ones with fat padded vinyl roofs and landau bars. To those for whom that word conjures up only derision, the SUVs of today (and for the last 10-20 years) are big, bold, yet boring and kitchy-all at the same time. Everyone’s riding that bandwagon these days-even Mercedes and BMW have their share of silver jellybeans that are parked in suburban driveways.

The old 58 Continental just strikes me as garish, like they made a car way too big and way too over-styled and fell flat. The comparison to fat drunk salesman is apt. The look to me also seems almost as if it were an armored car, as is, slap a 90mm gun on that sumbitch and watch it kick some Rooskie T54 ass.

In my area, one rarely sees any Bimmer 7 series or 5 series (their classy whips, IMHO) of any vintage but you can’t hardly swing a cat and not hit one of their SUVs or crossovers.

Full disclosure, I love the actual oldschool Fleetwood Broughams or Olds 98 Broughams and the like.

’58 sales literature still tried to maintain the fiction that Continental was a separate marque, although I see that the badging on the dash fudged a bit, calling it “Continental By Lincoln.” The ’59 literature is more ambiguous and by ’60 they were calling these “Lincoln Continentals.” Eight years later, Ford wasn’t calling them anything. They were erased from the history books like a discredited Soviet or North Korean political figure, and the Mark number was reset at III. (Mercifully, they hadn’t yet hit upon the idea of calling every Lincoln a MK Something!)

In true to the Vegas/mobster fashion of these big luxowagons, this generation of Continental was taken out to the desert and whacked, never to be acknowledged by Lincoln, which went “what Mark III-V?” when it re-introduced the Mark III again in 1968.

“Hey….maybe like the Mark III,IV and V went on a little trip…..you know what I mean…..”

Great find – I sure hope some Lincoln lover took it off somewhere for a full restoration – the prices for these cars have increased over the past 5 years – they used to be dirt cheap but have come up in value.

Would have been nice to have popped the hood just to see the 375 hp MEL engine – maybe the new owner will find and install a 3 deuces setup from the Marauder that made 400 hp…..

As someone who quite liikes these, I resent the fat, drunk salesman comment. I may be fat, but I’m only occasionally drunk and couldn’t sell water to a man dying of thirst.

Seriously though, these cars are all the excess of the 50’s wrapped up into one big package. I’ve often called the ’58 Buick Limited a “jukebox on wheels”–how else can one explain fifteen separate chrome hashmarks per fender–it’s actually a rather boring design under all that jewelry and that glitzy grille. This, on the other hand, is Out There and proud of it. Mid-century modern on speed. Other cars’ fins may have evoked spacecraft, but this one looked like it had been designed to drive the Martian highway. How can you not love it?

Is it beautiful? No, of course not. But it’s so interesting, so representative of the times, so very 1958 swagger, that I can’t help but love it. I’d be proud to own one.

I almost had the chance once with a ’59, not a Continental quite like this but its lower-line brother the Premiere. There was one sitting in a local junkyard in the late 90’s, complete, up high and out of harm’s way, looking as if no one had touched it since 1979 (its last registration sticker). I stared at that fantastic if faded Lincoln for a long time, only to come to the regrettable conclusion that as a high school kid with little money, no tools, and no mechanical know-how, it would only end badly. So I didn’t even ask about it. Five or so years later the junkyard was gone, fallen victim to land clearing for a highway, and I’ve always wondered if maybe someone saved that Premiere or if it went to the crusher with all the other parts cars surrounding it. Wish I’d at least gotten a photo.